


First Pride

by frostryn



Series: The People's Tomb Fic Jam Prompts [1]
Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Discord: The People's Tomb (Locked Tomb Trilogy), F/F, Fluff, Gay Pride, Pride, The People's Tomb Fic Jam: Pride, and maybe the cheesiest thing I've ever written, basically sweet indulgent plotless nonsense because I miss going to pride
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:49:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26530918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frostryn/pseuds/frostryn
Summary: College AU one-shot where Gideon Nav takes Harrowhark Nonagesimus to her first every Pride after finding out she's never been before.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Series: The People's Tomb Fic Jam Prompts [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1939300
Comments: 16
Kudos: 94





	First Pride

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my little submission for The People's Tomb fic jam prompt "pride" and it's the most baseline interpretation of the prompt and 100% self indulgent fluff. There are a lot of really great out of the box interpretations that everyone should totally read (tagged under: The People's Tomb Fic Jam: Pride), this was just spawned out of me really missing going to pride this year.

“No, you can’t back out now! You _said_ you would go with me last week!” Gideon said, exasperated, as she watched Harrow through the bathroom mirror. It was half past eight in the morning and Gideon was fresh from a shower, half dressed. She had been midway through drying her hair when this argument began. Standing in the doorway with yesterday’s makeup still smeared underneath her eyes and clad in one of Gideon’s old band tees (which was massive on her), Harrow was glaring daggers.  
  
“That may be the case, but Griddle, I have a test coming up in my microbio-”  
  
“In a month!” Gideon laughed, putting her head in her hands. She felt a little bit like screaming, but she ought to have expected this from Harrowhark Nonagesimus: a stubborn, bullheaded, absolute pain in the ass - and also Gideon’s girlfriend of nearly a year. “Come on, Harrow, I promise it won’t be that bad! I’ve gone every year since I was sixteen and I’ve always had fun.” Gideon turned to face her, leaning against the bathroom counter which was absolutely cluttered with the messy accountraments of their lives.  
  
“I don’t share your affinity for social events.” Harrow replied simply, and it was true but only because she refused to go anywhere or do _anything_ . Her short dark curls were sticking up in all directions, coal eyes still puffy from sleep (which she did not get much of) as she had essentially rolled out of bed with the express purpose of picking this fight.  
  
“But I’ll be with you the whole time!” Gideon was pleading now, leaning fully into it by steepling her hands together in a begging gesture. “Please, babe, for me?” Gideon watched as Harrow’s face went through a myriad of minute changes: from denial, to bargaining, to a final acceptance, cheeks reddened in embarrassment and irritation.  
  
“Fine.” She looked away when she said it, chin jutting outward in defiance as if she hadn’t just conceded. Gideon didn’t bother to hide her triumphant joy, grabbing her girlfriend up in her arms and smacking a kiss on her cheek.

Harrow just rolled her eyes, “Get off me, you big oaf. I need to shower.”  
  
“Of course, my devious darling!” Gideon let her go and bowed gallantly, earning her a playful flick to the forehead. But Harrow was going to come with her and nothing could sully that. As Harrow hopped in the shower, Gideon finished drying her short red hair and then styled it back, eventually leaving to search for a good outfit.  
  
Gideon and Harrow’s student apartment was one long rectangular studio, with a small bathroom and a kitchen near the front door. Their little bedroom area was partitioned off by a black curtain to maintain some semblance of separation between the different parts of their lives, which could be hung back to let them watch TV in bed (which they did often). Most of their furniture and framed wall art was Harrow’s and therefore black, but the posters and torn magazine pages taped to the walls and the rugs on the hardwood floor were a cacophonous rainbow of colors (Gideon’s). Their two aesthetics, which ought to have been in complete conflict with each other, melded together in the perfect homey visage of maximalism. All of their friends absolutely hated it.  
  
They had the option to move into a bigger apartment, but the studio had been cheaper and the two of them were just relieved to get out of the cramped dorm they’d shared previously. Harrow was a year younger than Gideon, but they were both in their Junior year at Cannan University. They had absolutely hated each other throughout all of elementary and high school, and then were paired as dormmates during Freshman year at the university they’d both separately decided to attend by chance. A year of being forced into close quarters, constant clashing, and then one fateful drunken love confession later, they were completely inseparable. Gideon wouldn’t trade that for the world. 

Less than an hour later, changed into black jean shorts and a t-shirt she’d bought the year prior and mutilated into a tank top (reading: “ _tr_ **_eat your girl right_ ** _”_ ), Gideon was taking down the lesbian flag that hung above the fireplace to safety pin it to the shoulders of her top like a cape.  
  
“That shirt is terrible.” Said Harrow from the doorway of the bathroom, patting at her hair with a towel.  
  
“Oh don’t lie, you love it.” Gideon waggled her eyebrows. “What are you planning to wear?”  
  
Harrow, ducking past the black curtain to their closet, called back “Clothes, like a normal person.”  
  
“Damn it, I was so sure you’d join my nudist colony. I guess better luck next time.” Gideon went to check her appearance in the mirror, and when Harrow reappeared she was wearing a black button up with lace at the collar and a knee-length circle skirt patterned with skeleton hands. It was the sort of ensemble she’d become known for, indistinguishable from what she had worn the day before and what she would wear the next. It was also pretty weather inappropriate given that it was only the beginning of August and therefore the sun still beat down like it had been designed with the express purpose to kill them all.  
  
“You look really cute.” Gideon said. “Not much of a Pride outfit, though. You could do a colorful eye look, you’re good at makeup stuff.” She suggested, flipping the top of a colorful eyeshadow palette up and swiping sweaks of rainbow across each cheek.  
  
“Where did you even get that?”  
  
“Oh, I borrowed it from Corona. I think she’ll be there too, so I need to return it before we go.” Gideon replied, holding it out for Harrow’s examination. She was frowning, as if she were being offered roadkill rather than a perfectly good (and perfectly too fucking expensive) pressed eyehsadow palette. Then again, the only eyeshadow colors Harrow owned were red, black, and white.  
  
“No, thank you. I absolutely don’t want that.” Harrow crossed to the other side of the counter, probably on the hunt for her eyeliner and black lipstick. Gideon hoped it was because she was allergic to color, not that she was still mad about Gideon nearly hooking up with Coronabeth towards the end of Freshman year. That entire clutsterfuck of a situation had nearly prevented the two of them from dating at all.  
  
Half past 10 AM, the two were finally ready to get going. Gideon was giddy with excitement and Harrow looked like she’d rather die than attend Cannan city’s yearly Pridefest, but she wasn’t going to successfully back out now. It was only a month ago that Gideon had learned the earth shattering truth that Harrow had never attended Pride, and it was after a lot of bargaining and promises and pleas that Harrow had even agreed to go the first time. It had then taken three more times (this morning being the third) for her to genuinely be on board. Even then, she still had the resigned look in her eye like she was a caged animal preparing for its eminent death.  
  


  
Canaan Pridefest was hosted in the city center, encompassing an entire large park and a few of the surrounding streets, which were closed off for the entire weekend. In the middle of the park was a massive stage for larger scheduled events and there were a few additional smaller ones scattered about the area. Harrow and Gideon took the bus from their off-campus student apartment building, Gideon watching out the window as the amount of pride flags doubled and tripled and quadrupled the closer they got to the park. When they did arrive, they went through bag-check without a problem and were deposited in front of a row of colorful shop booths. They were arranged in a square perimeter around the park on either side of the surrounding closed-off streets, selling everything from food, to cheesy printed tees, to artisan jewelry, to weed paraphernalia. They had it all, basically, and it was overwhelming even for a seasoned pride attendee like Gideon. Harrow had a deer-in-the-headlights look in her eyes and held Gideon’s hand like a vise grip. Music blasted from somewhere nearby and the streets were flooded with people carrying flags and dressed in spectacularly flamboyant outfits. It was absolutely fantastic, Harrow was probably going to drop dead from perceiving so many colors at once. Gideon gave her hand a little reassuring squeeze.  
  
“Where should we go first, my penumbral queen?” Gideon asked, smiling down at her girlfriend. She was a head taller than Harrow, always had been, but that had never stopped her from being completely terrifying when she chose to be. Now though, taken out of her element, Harrow was just tiny and socially awkward, practically clinging onto Gideon for dear life.  
  
“We should get something to eat.” Harrow replied in a carefully composed, practical tone.  
  
“Fantastic!” 

They bought an early lunch from one of the food trucks lined up on the left side of the park, miraculously finding an empty bench on which to sit, eat, and people watch. Gideon had always loved to watch people at pride because every single attendee was always decorated to the nines with their respective gear and wearing their most brilliant smiles. It was like she could live vicariously through the rainbow of people clustered around her, shedding their complex histories to just be loudly prideful of those very crucial parts of themselves for a day or two. They could be a single, completely united community then. It meant a lot to Gideon to see people just get to be unabashedly queer and she hoped it would mean something to Harrowhark, who had been closeted a lot longer than Gideon had.  
  
“Oh, hello Nav, Nonagesimus,” Came a voice from the crowd, and Gideon turned her head to see it had come from Palamedes Sextus. Harrow and Palamedes had met in one of their first classes Freshman year, and they’d become a loosely knit group ever since. “I didn’t expect to see you both here.” He was wearing a shirt with the chemical symbol **Bi** , except it proclaimed bisexuality rather than bismuth. Beside him was Camilla (wearing a shirt that read _“I’m not gay, but my girlfriend is”_ ) and she was walking hand in hand with Coronabeth. Ianthe, Coronabeth’s paler, and much creepier twin, hung back with a look of abject disapproval etched into her face. Ianthe hadn’t liked Gideon to begin with, but dislike had mutated into hatred as soon as Gideon and Harrow started dating last year.  
  
“I take that as a personal affront to my character.” Said Gideon, raising an eyebrow. “And I could say the same to you, Sextus. You should’ve told us you were coming, we could’ve met up for lunch!”  
  
“It’s eleven in the morning.” Said Camilla, who probably had every part of her day planned out in ten second intervals and wasn’t ready to have that disrupted by an 11 AM meal. 

“Actually, I would love lunch.” Corona interjected with a shrug, golden curls bouncing across her sun-kissed shoulders. “Does it count as lunch if you haven’t had breakfast?”  
  
Palamedes just shrugged. “I could go for something.” He threw a glance to Camilla and she nodded, resigned to the will of her hungry companion and girlfriend.  
  
“Aww, dipping out on us so soon Sex Pal? And here I thought the gang was gonna get back together for a reunion tour.” Gideon said, slinging one arm around Harrow’s shoulder. Corona snorted with laughter.  
  
“Oh, how I missed your comedy.” Palamedes said, deadpan.  
  
“I didn’t.” said Camilla.  
  
“Yeah, I know, I’m amazing. Please, resist the urge to bow down and swear your fealty to me, the god of humor.” Gideon replied with a smirk.  
  
“You’re terrible, Griddle.” said Harrow, leaning her head on her shoulder as if to express how terrible she actually thought Gideon was.  
  
“Just the worst.” Gideon agreed, planting a kiss on the top of her girlfriend’s head. “So guys, we should meet up again, aren’t there going to be fireworks later?”  
  
“Fireworks?” Harrow asked, sounding completely miserable.  
  
“Yeah, they didn’t do that last year, did they? So exciting.” Said Corona, violet eyes glittering.  
  
“Ah yes, because nothing says pride like blowing something up.” Drawled Ianthe sarcastically, accompanied by a dismissive wave of her pallid hand.  
  
“I’d wager it says exactly that.” Gideon countered. “But anyways, why don’t we meet up near the fountain when they start?”  
  
“Sounds good to me,” replied Palamedes, his lambent grey eyes wandering in the direction of the food trucks. The other three agreed with varying enthusiasm: giddy agreement from Corona, an absolutely wild _“Okay”_ from Camilla, and a nod from Ianthe which was somehow violently hostile. The little group departed towards their eminent lunch while Gideon and Harrow finished theirs.  
  
“I told you this would be fun, you run into all kinds of people you never expect to see!” Gideon said, squeezing Harrow’s bony shoulder. “Are you having fun yet?”  
  
Harrow shrugged, “We’ve been here less than an hour and haven't done anything.”  
  
“Okay then, my dark sorceress, let’s do something!”  
  
Over the course of that day, they did an innumerable amount of somethings and all throughout poor, long suffering Harrowhark was unexpectedly patient. Gideon had assumed she’d be peeved by midday and begging that they return to seclusion in their little apartment and never see daylight again, but instead Harrow went where Gideon led her with only a moderate amount of complaining. Their first excursion had been to check out the main stage, and although they couldn’t get within 100 feet of it due to the crowd, they were able to catch the end of a drag show and the beginning of a musical performance. Harrow’s experiences with crowded events had all in some way involved the church she’d grown up in or academia and being in the center of pride was about the farthest thing from either of those, leaving her out of place and stumbling to keep up with Gideon. Gideon kept her promise and remained by her side the whole time, holding tiny girlfriend’s hand and checking up on her every few minutes to make sure she hadn’t died of shock yet. It was then that Harrow began to relax, fraction by fraction, frown going slack on her face, shoulders relaxing.  
  
After departing from the main stage area, the two wandered through the square of little booth tables which vendors and artists had rented, admiring their colorful and punny wares. They passed by flags, patches and pins, a booth selling LGBT+ books, another selling jewlery made of fruit, and an innumerable amount of very stupid t-shirts. It took every ounce of restraint Gideon possessed not to purchase every awful shirt she laid her eyes on. Every little table was crowded with merchandise and some sellers even had it hanging from their awnings with piles stacked high in the back. It was crowded and loud and hot, but Gideon was completely delighted.  
  
At one booth they stopped at, fully caparisoned with original art prints, jewelry, pins, and shirts, Gideon caught Harrow’s gaze lingering on a small enamel bin baring the lesbian flag.  
  
“Hey, let me buy that for you.” Gideon offered, leaning over Harrow’s shoulder.  
  
Harrow frowned, hand hovering hesitantly above the pin. “It doesn’t really fit my aesthetic.”  
  
“It’s nice to have a souvenir from your first pride.” Gideon reached into her pocket for her wallet, then handed both the pin and her debit card to the women running the booth. When they were handed back, Gideon carefully affixed the pin to the collar of Harrow’s shirt. Harrow averted her eyes, brows creasing. She was always a complete pain in the ass about showing or receiving even an iota of affection, but there was the beginning of a smile tugging at the edges of her lips. Gideon, who had every single Harrowhark expression memorized, felt like an olympic gold medalist when she took her hand again to recommence their wandering through the crowd. 

They spent the rest of the day, into the late afternoon and eventually the evening, wandering the park and enjoying the festivities. They caught the ending of the massive parade as it made its way through the street, complete with a marching band, musical performances, and several insanely well-crafted floats. When it got too hot they got ice cream (rainbow sherbet for Gideon, plain vanilla for Harrow) and later they stopped for a quick dinner in a nearby restaurant. They ran into a few other people they knew from school, including Professor Pent and her husband Magnus, carting around their god-kids Jeannemary and Isaac, who were wrapped up in a big Bi flag like a blanket. It turned out to be their first pride too, so Gideon paid for the two ghastly teens to get more ice cream than they probably should have been allowed.

  
**  
  


Ages later when the sun finally dropped low on the horizon, Gideon and Harrow were sitting on the cold lip of the huge marble fountain in the center of the park. Palamedes and Camilla had been there waiting for them, Corona and Ianthe joining not long after having left to find something to drink. Cam and Pal were in the midst of a conversation about a term project which had just been announced, and Corona was gossiping to a quiet Ianthe. Their chatter melded into the background song of crickets chirping and cars roaring by a few streets away. A content tired feeling had settled into Gideon’s entire body, her feet buzzing with pain and head empty of thoughts. It had been a good day, better than expected that morning when she had to beg Harrow out of their apartment. It was no longer boiling hot, but pleasantly warm in the absence of the sun. Harrow leaned against her, head on her shoulder, staring off into space. This was a comfortable, congenial quiet, in which Gideon wrapped one arm around Harrow’s waist to pull her closer while their heads turned up to face the sky.  
  
The first firework startled Harrow out of her daze, her dark eyes refocusing as red sparks shot across the empty blue expanse of the sky. Everything glowed scarlet, and then the hue dissipated and another rocket shot up with a screech. There were claps and cheers from the crowd as more were lit off, crested, and exploded in a brilliant corona of light. The conversation stopped as the group indulged in that brief, childish awe of watching a fireworks display. Colors reflected off of Palamedes glasses and Corona cheered enthusiastically, grabbing her sister by the arm and smiling that brilliant golden smile.  
  
Harrow placed one bony hand on Gideon’s cheek, turning her head to face away from the crowd. Her dark eyes were alight, reflecting the sparkling colors above them, and she was smiling. The lights from above casted her skin blue, red, purple. Suddenly it was all cacophonous, overwhelming, and beautiful. Harrow was beautiful, she’d always been so god damn beautiful, even more so when she smiled. Gideon smiled too, so hard her cheeks hurt, and she was still smiling when Harrow pulled her in for a kiss.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to The People's Tomb server for helping me come up with some of the goofy pride shirt ideas in this! I had a lot of fun writing it so I hope everyone enjoyed. Feel free to talk to me at [frostryn](https://frostryn.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!


End file.
